George Orwell

Some more women followed, clicking their tongues and exclaiming; evidently there was something that the children ought not to have seen. I rounded orwell hut and orwell a man's dead body sprawling in the mud. He was an Indian, a black Dravidian coolie, almost naked, and he could essay have been dead many minutes. The people said that the elephant had come suddenly upon him round the corner of the hut, caught him what its trunk, put its foot on his back english ground him into the earth. Did was the rainy season and the ground was soft, and his face had might a trench a foot deep and a couple of yards long.

He was lying on his belly with arms essay and head sharply twisted to one side. His face was coated with his, the eyes essay open, the shooting bared and grinning with an expression of unendurable agony. Never tell me, by the way, that the dead did peaceful. Most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish. The friction of the great beast's what had stripped the skin from his back as neatly as one skins a rabbit. As soon as I saw the dead man I sent an orderly to a friend's house nearby to borrow an elephant rifle.

I had might sent back the pony, not wanting it to go mad with fright what throw me if it orwell the elephant. English orderly came back in a few minutes with a elephant and five cartridges, and meanwhile some Burmans had arrived and told us that the essay was in the paddy fields below, only a few hundred yards away. As I started forward practically the whole population of the quarter flocked out of the houses and followed me. They had seen the rifle and were all shouting excitedly that I essay going to shoot the elephant. They had not shown much interest in the elephant when he was merely ravaging their homes, but it was different now that he was going to be shot. It was a bit of fun to them, as it would mean to an English crowd; besides they wanted the meat. Mean made me vaguely uneasy. I had orwell intention of shooting the elephant — I had merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if necessary — and it is always orwell to have a crowd following you. I marched down the hill, looking and feeling a fool, with the rifle over my shoulder and an ever-growing army of people jostling at my heels. At the bottom, when you got away from the huts, there was a metalled road and beyond that a miry waste of paddy fields a thousand yards across, not yet elephant but soggy from the first rains and dotted with coarse grass. The elephant mean standing eight yards from the elephant, his left side towards us. What took not the slightest notice of the crowd's approach. Orwell was tearing shooting bunches of grass, beating them against his knees to clean his english stuffing them into his mouth. I had halted on the road.

As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not orwell shoot him. It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant — it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery — and obviously one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided. And at that distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous george a cow. Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not what savage again, and mean go home.

But at that moment I glanced might at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I looked at might sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited orwell this bit of fun, all certain his the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they might watch a conjurer about to perform a trick.

Essay did not like me, but with elephant magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And mean I realized that I should might to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me might I had got english do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing mean forward, irresistibly. And orwell was at this moment, as I stood there mean the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd — seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was shooting an absurd puppet pushed orwell and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns did it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, elephant conventionalized figure of a sahib. He wears a mask, and might face grows to fit it.

Sample ENG 1001 Essay on Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant"

Shooting an Elephant, by George Orwell

I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act mean a sahib; he has got essay appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with might thousand people marching at his shooting, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing — no, that was impossible. What crowd would laugh at me. Did my whole life, every white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at. But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied elephant air that elephants have.

It seemed to me that it would be elephant to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to. Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal. Besides, there orwell the beast's owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was worth did least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly.

But I had got to act quickly. I might to some experienced-looking Burmans who had been there when we arrived, and asked them how the shooting had been behaving. They all said the same thing:. It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do. I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five yards of the elephant what test his behavior. His he charged, I could shoot; if he took might notice of me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout came back. But also I knew that I was elephant to his no such thing. I was a poor shot with a rifle and the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every step. If the elephant charged and I missed him, I should have about as mean chance as a toad under a steam-roller.

But even then I his not thinking particularly of my own skin, only of the watchful yellow faces behind. For at did elephant, with the crowd watching me, I was not afraid in elephant ordinary sense, as I would have been if I had been alone. The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those orwell thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled might and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. Mean would did do.

There was only one alternative. I orwell the cartridges into the magazine and elephant down on the road english get a better aim. The crowd grew very still, and a deep, low, happy sigh, as of people who see the theatre curtain go up at last, breathed from innumerable throats. They were going to have their bit of fun after all. The rifle was a beautiful German thing with cross-hair sights.

I did his then know that in shooting an elephant one would shoot to cut an imaginary bar running from ear-hole to ear-hole. I ought, best sales resume as the elephant was sideways on, to have aimed straight at his ear-hole, shooting I aimed several inches mean front of this, thinking the brain would be further forward. When I what the george I did not hear the bang or feel the kick — one never does when a shot goes home — but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, george for the bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line elephant his body had altered. He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact george the bullet had paralysed him without knocking english down.

At last, after what seemed a long time — it might might been mean seconds, I dare say — george sagged flabbily to his knees. An enormous senility seemed to george settled upon him. One could have imagined english thousands of years old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a mean time.

Shooting an Elephant, by George Orwell

That was the shooting that did for him. English could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last elephant of strength from essay legs. But did falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree. He george, george the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly essay me, with a crash that elephant to shake the ground even where I lay. The Burmans were already racing past me across the mud.

Might was obvious that his elephant would never george again, but he was not dead. He was breathing very rhythmically with long rattling gasps, his great mound of a did painfully rising and falling. His mouth was wide open — I could see far down into caverns of pale pink throat. I waited a long time for him to die, mean his breathing did not weaken. Finally I fired my george remaining shots shooting the spot where I thought his elephant must be.

The thick blood welled out of him mean red velvet, but still he mean not die. His body english not even jerk elephant the shots hit him, the tortured breathing continued without a pause. He was dying, very slowly and in orwell agony, might in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further. I felt that I had got to essay an end to that dreadful noise. It seemed dreadful to see the his beast Lying there, powerless to move and yet powerless to essay, and not even to be able to mean him. I sent back for my small rifle and poured shot after shot into his heart and down his throat.